


evening after

by featherx



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: "why didnt they just ask for directions" - the fic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Minor Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Dedue Molinaro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:29:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23140030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherx/pseuds/featherx
Summary: Yuri opens his eyes—and stares, blankly, at the sleeping face that meets him. The sleeping face of astranger.Every coherent thought flies straight out of his head, just like how he flies off the bed and tumbles onto the carpeted floor, becauseno, no, no,this couldnotbe happening.
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 26
Kudos: 374





	evening after

**Author's Note:**

> i've always wanted to write a "morning after" sort of adventure (which is where the title came from) and yurileth ended up being the experimental ship for it because i've got the brainworms for them right now LOL. if you like badly-written chase scenes, then there are three of them here for you!
> 
> this is rated M for sexual references but nothing explicit (unfortunately). please enjoy!! ❤

Yuri wakes, strangely enough, to sunlight.

At first, all he can really think is _Fuck, my head hurts!_ Shortly after that is _Fuck, this bed is soft._ So he spends what must be about five straight minutes snuggling further into the warmth under the blankets, because he hardly gets nice warm mornings in his shitty apartment.

And then his third chronological but first intelligent thought comes: _Fuck, what the fuck?_

After working the night shift for nearly every job he’s had since he was a teenager, there came a point where sunlight had somehow become both Yuri’s best friend and worst enemy. Sunlight means sleep and a few hours’ respite from the perpetual weariness that has made home in his bones—but if he wakes up and it’s still bright outside, it means something’s wrong. Terribly wrong.

Yuri opens his eyes—and stares, blankly, at the sleeping face that meets him. The sleeping face of a _stranger._

Every coherent thought flies straight out of his head, just like how he flies off the bed and tumbles onto the carpeted floor.

No, no, no. This is _not_ happening—hasn’t Yuri grown smart enough to stay _out_ of situations like these ever since that one time with Balthus? _Fuck!_ Had he just cuddled with some stranger for five minutes? Actually, for the whole night? No, what time even is it? The sun is far too bright for it to only be early morning—

Okay. Okay, deep breaths. This is fine. He can get through this. No problem. He just has to… to remain calm. Yeah! No big deal.

Yuri inhales deeply, then casts a cursory glance around the room they’re in. It’s some cheap hotel room, that’s for sure, he’s been in one too many of these to not know what they look like by this point. He’s only wearing his nice halter neck blouse from last night (thank God—this had cost him almost two months’ savings), but he fortunately spots the rest of his clothes flung haphazardly on the dresser; Yuri doesn’t think he’s ever dressed faster in his life. Phone, wallet, house keys, all in his trouser pockets…

“Mn…”

Yuri freezes halfway through reaching for the door—when he turns around, he’s… not expecting the stranger to have such nice eyes, even though they’re only really half-open. They’re blue, he notes, somewhere in the back of his barely-functioning mind. _Really_ blue. Not even Constance has eyes as blue as those…

Wait, what is he doing? Yuri should not be letting himself get distracted by some stupid eyes, he has to get out of here before—

The stranger tilts his head. He’s not wearing anything except for a black choker around his neck that looks far too pretty to be legal. “Who are you?”

“Who am I—who are _you?_ ” Yuri exclaims, pressing his back up against the door and keeping his hand firmly closed around the knob, just in case the stranger magically pulls a knife out of nowhere. “What did you—do to me, huh? I have a phone and I’m not afraid to report you!”

All Yuri gets for his blustering is a dead-eyed stare. “Report me for… what?”

“You know!” Yuri waves his phone around. God, does it even have battery? “For whatever you might have done last night!” The last thing he can remember from last night is… heading to the bar? Everything else afterwards is a complete blur, though he wonders how he could have forgotten a face as nice as this stranger’s.

The stranger just looks even more confused. “I didn’t… I don’t…” He trails off and remains silent for several long seconds until, finally, he mumbles, “I don’t… remember… anything…”

Yuri lets his grip loosen on the doorknob. “You have to be kidding.”

“I don’t!” the stranger repeats, panic creeping into his voice. “I promise, I—” His gaze flicks down to his bare chest, and he lets out an embarrassed squeak before yanking the blankets over himself. “I don’t know how we got here, or… who you are, or anything, I…”

“Okay, okay, calm down,” Yuri says, like _he’s_ at all calm right now. He can’t let this man infect him with his panic after he’d done five different breathing exercises in the span of a minute just a while ago. “We’re, uh. We’re in the same boat, then! Don’t panic. Like, seriously. Please don’t panic.” _Or else he might start thinking_ I _took advantage of_ him.

The stranger blinks up at him from under the covers like a lost child. “S… uh… Sorry…”

Yuri shakes his head, not sure what the man’s even apologizing for. “Look,” he says, “uh… we can just forget about this, alright? It’s no big deal. You never had a one-night stand before?”

“No,” the stranger mutters. Then, without bothering to give Yuri any time to process his answer, he reaches over to grab some wrinkled clothes from the nearby desk and pull them over himself. “But I think I’d remember at least _something—_ ” He looks up from his half-done trousers and says, “What’s your name?”

“Like I’d tell you?” Yuri responds, mostly on reflex—he immediately feels bad when the man flinches as if struck, but it’s _true._ He isn’t about to be giving away his name to just any one-night stand he sees in his cheap hotel room bed, even if the one-night stand has an adorable face and a very pullable choker. “Whatever. Let’s just never see each other again, okay? Okay!”

He pulls the door open, nearly wrenching it off its hinges, and sprints out of the room without looking back.

Yuri only stops to catch his breath when he’s relatively safe in one of the shaky, clanking elevators—he leans against the wall and heaves out a sigh, feeling the tension drain from his shoulders. How could he have let something like this happen to himself? Alcohol is simply _not_ his style. Drinking too much of it is just asking for trouble. So why…

The sudden memory of drinking alone in the bar like a complete loser makes him groan in his hands. Right. Balthus had recommended the place… and then… had Yuri gone by himself? Probably. Neither Constance nor Hapi are overly fond of alcohol either, and Balthus, man of the hour, had business to attend to last night. Business Yuri had assigned him to do, in fact. But getting blackout drunk and ending up in some pretty stranger’s arms at some ungodly hour of the morning? What kind of elementary mistake is that?

The elevator clangs to a stop at the lobby, and Yuri hastily makes towards the doors. _Ugh._ Whatever happened, happened, and it’s over now. He probably isn’t far from his place—right? Where had the bar been, anyway? Had he—

“Hey!” an irritated voice calls out—Yuri turns around, blinking in confusion, at the tired-looking clerk leaning over the counter. “Yeah, you. You didn’t pay for your room last night.”

A pause. “What was that?” Yuri weakly asks.

“You didn’t. Pay. Last night,” the clerk grinds out. “You were too busy sucking face with your boyfriend, so the guy working the night shift said he’d just collect the payment in the morning. Well? Hand it over.”

 _Uuugh._ The day’s barely started, but it’s already going downhill fast. Yuri flashes the clerk as pretty a smile as possible, hoping it mollifies the man somewhat, and retrieves his wallet from his pocket. “ _So_ sorry about that, I barely remember a thing—just hold on one moment. How much is it? I’ll pay half and he can pay the rest, is that fine?”

The clerk eyes him in obvious suspicion, probably wondering why Yuri’s left his supposed boyfriend behind, but grumbles the amount. Alright. Not too bad. Yuri’s sure he has enough for half of that, at least. He flicks his wallet open—

Oh.

“Hello?” the clerk prompts, when all Yuri can do is stare blankly down at his wallet.

His _empty_ wallet.

This can’t be happening. Can it? Logically enough he must have spent _some_ money at the bar last night, but not enough to completely empty his wallet, right? He’d left his credit card with Mom, thank _fuck,_ but everything else is gone. Except for one crumpled receipt from his favorite milk tea place, dated two months ago. And his photo card with Balthus, Constance, and Hapi, but that isn’t going to help pay for this, is it.

“Aha,” Yuri manages, pretending his voice doesn’t noticeably crack at the second syllable. “Ahaha… um… Yes. Just. Um… Please… hold on… one more moment.”

“You’re not gonna tell me you don’t have enough money, are you?”

“Haha! Of course not,” Yuri laughs. _Because I don’t have any money, period!_ Fuck’s sake, how much had he even brought last night? Two dollars? How could he have absolutely nothing left? Wait—that stranger, his not-boyfriend, had he _robbed him?_ Worse, had Yuri _paid_ him to… to…

The only elevator in the hotel _dings_ at that exact moment, and Yuri whirls around to meet the eyes of, lo and behold, the stranger he had just been thinking of. “Y-You!” he stammers; the stranger steps back, looking ready to jab the elevators door closed. “No, don’t you dare—get over here!”

“What? Why?” the stranger practically whines. He’s not even looking at Yuri—he’s eyeing the elevator buttons like he’s trying to figure out which floor to escape to. “I thought we could never see each other again?”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t pay for our hotel room, so come on,” Yuri grumbles, stomping over to grab the stranger’s wrist and drag him over to the front desk, where the disgruntled clerk is waiting. The stranger casts the closing elevator doors a mournful look. “You—You didn’t rob me last night, did you?”

The stranger’s face twists into confusion. “Rob you?”

“Okay, no, you don’t look like that kinda guy. Then…” Yuri clears his throat. “I didn’t… _pay_ you… or anything, did I?”

Still more confusion. “Um… for what?”

 _Fine, play dumb,_ Yuri mentally huffs. “Just, uh… well. I sort of…” _don’t have any money to pay even half of our stupid room_ sounds entirely too lame, and he doesn’t need the stranger taking pity on him, but what else can he say?

The stranger looks over at the clerk, who’s been impatiently drumming his fingers on the desk for the past few minutes, then reaches for his pocket and fishes out a worn-looking wallet. “Here,” he says, forking over a handful of bills; “is this enough?”

The clerk counts the money, then nods and waves them away, turning back to his computer. Yuri exchanges looks with the stranger, and neither of them speak for another few seconds before the stranger gives him an awkward nod. “Okay, um, I’ll be going now.”

“Wait!” Yuri hurries to say. “You—You didn’t just pay for both of us.”

“I think I did.”

“Well—now I need to return the favor,” Yuri stammers, wracking his head for something to give the man. Obviously not money, but he really doesn’t have anything on his person aside from his phone and an empty wallet…

The stranger just frowns. “No, you don’t.”

“S-Still. At least let me do something.” The stranger’s already walking away, heading towards the hotel’s exit, and Yuri nearly stumbles on the scratchy carpet to keep up with his longer legs. “I don’t forget favors, you know,” he adds, doing his best to sound more like his usual unruffled self.

“You can forget this one, then,” the stranger says. He doesn’t even sound like he’s joking. Yuri sighs heavily as they exit the building, the noises of the city assaulting them the moment they step outside. “It’s really fine.”

“But—” Yuri shakes his head, looking around them—and his eyes widen when he spots a nearby storefront. “I got it! You haven’t eaten yet, have you? Well, duh, we both just woke up. Okay, come on, follow me. I know that place over there.”

“W-Wait—”

“Just come!”

Yuri’s not a monster—he has to force down the guilt that rises up in him when Ashe pops out from the café kitchen and brightens at the sight of him. “Of course it’ll be on the house!” he chirps, handing the both of them menus. “You didn’t tell me you were visiting, Yuri! What brings?”

“Oh, uh, just passing by. Haha,” Yuri manages, doing his absolute best not to look obviously awkward. Ashe’s eyes narrow in suspicion all the same, and Yuri gives him his best I’ll-explain-later look. “Thanks so much, sparrow. Sorry for the bother, really.”

When Ashe flits away to head back to the kitchen, calling Dedue’s name, the stranger tilts his head towards the swinging kitchen doors. “Who’s that?” he asks; and, before Yuri can say anything, “Your boyfriend?”

Yuri almost chokes on the house water. “ _Boyfriend?_ Ashe? What gave you the idea?”

“You called him _sparrow,_ ” the stranger points out, repeating the endearment slowly as if his tongue can’t quite wrap around its letters.

“Yeah, and? It’s a cute nickname. Fits him, right? Doesn’t mean we’re together, we’re just friends. He’s _engaged,_ for Christ’s sake.” Yuri looks down at the menu, idly wondering why the stranger even cares. He has such a serious face, Yuri wouldn’t think he had a nosy side. “Okay, well, order whatever. It’s free, after all.”

The stranger frowns. “And that’s fine?”

Yuri lifts his menu higher to hide his wince. “I told you, I don’t like owing others.”

Dedue’s cooking is as perfect as ever—Yuri doesn’t think he’s ever had better food anywhere else, and he doubts he ever will. For some unholy reason, the stranger gets strawberry pancakes for _lunch,_ which, okay, Yuri’s not going to judge him. It’s not his place. It’s just extremely strange to watch the stranger go through two plates of pancakes drizzled in syrup and cream and then wash that all down with the most bitter coffee available.

“That looks good,” Yuri says, pushing away his plate and leaning across the table. The stranger blinks up at him, still chewing his last bite of sickeningly sweet pancake. “Great! So I’ve repaid my favor.”

“You really didn’t need to, but thanks,” the stranger says.

“Of course. You clearly aren’t enjoying those pancakes.”

“They’re good,” he says—and then, unexpectedly enough, he smiles. Yuri blinks. He hasn’t seen the man smile until now, and it makes his serious face soften in ways Yuri hadn’t been counting on. “Thank you.”

“Oh, uh…” Yuri shrugs as gracefully as he can. “Yeah! No problem. Whatever. It’s, uh—” Is he still half-asleep or something? Why can he only form parts of a sentence!? “Do you remember nothing at all from last night?” he finally manages to spit out. “Anything that can help?”

The stranger frowns again. “Um, nothing useful. I went to a bar…” He pauses for another few seconds. “And then I woke up this morning.”

Yuri supposes he should have known. “Okay, well, no can do. Do you at least know where we are? I only know this is Ashe’s café ‘cause he sent me a photo once, but I don’t actually know _where_ in the city we are, specifically…” When the stranger only shakes his head, Yuri sighs and pulls up his phone, trying to ignore the red battery sign at the top-right corner of the screen. “Fine, let me just… leech off the free Wi-Fi for a sec…”

Before they leave, Ashe accosts Yuri at the café doors, his delighted smile telling them he’s entirely aware that the three of them are blocking the way and not caring in the least. “So, who’s this anyway?” he asks, giving the stranger a curious look. “You didn’t mention anyone in your texts, Yuri.”

“Oh. Yeah, this is… uh…” Yuri makes a vague hand gesture that hopefully gets the point across. Ashe’s expression doesn’t change. “You know.”

“I don’t…?”

“I’m Byleth,” the stranger— _Byleth,_ thank God, finally, a name—says. “Thank you for the food. Sorry for the inconvenience, too.”

“Byleth! Nice to meet you! I’m Ashe.” They shake hands—Yuri eyes Ashe’s grip, which looks slightly too tight to be normal. “And don’t worry about it! You two should come again soon, okay?”

When Byleth turns his back on them, Ashe grabs Yuri’s wrist and hisses, “Who the heck is that?”

“God, I wish I could tell you,” Yuri grumbles. “You sure are good with the whole cute, nice, innocent thing until no one’s listening, huh? Kind of scary if you ask m—”

“You’re not kidnapping him or anything, are you?” Ashe asks, still keeping his wrist in a death grip. “Or—no, _he’s_ not kidnapping _you,_ is he?”

“I’ve yet to figure that one out,” Yuri primly replies. “I’ll update you on everything _later,_ got it? So let go of me before you permanently cut off my precious blood circulation, please! I’m too young and beautiful to die by your hands!”

Yuri hurries to join Byleth—huh, it’s weird to _not_ think of him as The Stranger anymore—by the doors. “You, er, didn’t have to wait for me.” There’s no reason for him to, after all.

Byleth shrugs. “I had to.”

“Ah—what?”

He points at Yuri’s phone and Google Maps displayed on it, and Yuri tries not to be too disappointed. Disappointed? Why would he be, anyway? Sheesh. “Right. Yeah. Haha.” He peers at the screen, skimming through the information that finally decided to load, and sighs. “It’s a bit of a long walk to the train station for me…” A train would be the fastest way to get back to his place, because he can hardly trust the taxis in any part of the city, but the real problem would be figuring out how to _pay_ for the train. “What about you? I’ll load in your destination and you can copy it down or—”

“No need.”

“Huh?”

Byleth leans over his phone and zooms out of the map, probably scouring the named locations until he finds one in particular and nods. “I need to take the train too.”

“…Huh,” Yuri repeats uselessly.

“So you don’t need to worry about paying for the train,” Byleth tells him, after a moment’s pause and a hesitant glance. “I don’t have anymore money, but I’ve got my pass. Um, don’t think of it as another favor, please.”

Yuri wants to tear his hair out in disbelief. “You have to be kidding.”

“I’m not.” Byleth looks back down at his phone, then starts heading in the instructed directions. Once again, Yuri has to struggle to keep up with his annoyingly fast pace. “It’s not a problem, really.”

“But I’m going to think about it and feel bad about it for _ever_ ,” Yuri mutters. When he looks up at the lack of response, Byleth doesn’t seem to have heard—or he’s actively ignoring him, considering they’re too near each other for Byleth to not have heard, and that only irritates Yuri more. “So, Byleth, huh?”

Byleth’s face twists in what looks like a mixture of confusion and discomfort. “What?”

“Not a name you hear often.”

“What’s yours, then? It’s only fair now.”

Urgh. He has a point. “Yuri.” Well, it technically isn’t his real name, so at least there’s that. Still, giving away his name like he’s giving away free gifts to complete strangers makes Yuri internally shiver. “Cute, right?”

Byleth tilts his head in thought. If he even thinks. He looks like he doesn’t. “Not a name you hear often.”

“Oh, I _get_ it, so you have a teasing side to you as well,” Yuri huffs. “At least my name means something nice. You know, it means _lily_ in Japanese. Like the flower.” It also means _light of God,_ but Yuri would rather not mention that, considering it doesn’t fit his aesthetic at all. “What does ‘Byleth’ mean? Is it something from mythology? I’ve never heard of it.”

Another head-tilt, this time to the other side. “King of Hell.”

“I… Come again?”

“It’s not from mythology. It’s from demonology.” Byleth leans over, peering at the map on Yuri’s phone, then turns a corner on the street—Yuri does the same, narrowly avoiding smacking into a lamp post. “Byleth’s a king of Hell who commands demons and… all that stuff. Eighty-five legions of demons.” He pauses, then gives Yuri a look from the corner of his eye. “Cute, right?”

“Who on Earth names their children after _that?_ ” Yuri squawks.

“My dad, I guess.”

“Is your dad a Satanist, by any chance?”

Yuri’s expecting Byleth to just say “Hm” noncommittally, as seems to be his default response to everything, but he— _laughs_ instead. Soft and low and under his breath, but a laugh all the same, one that sounds strange coming from someone who’s been as emotionless as he’s acted for the past hour. “No,” Byleth eventually says, “but my mother was involved with a church before. Maybe she got it from there.”

“A—A church, huh,” Yuri repeats, mostly to have something to say. Now his name just sounds boring in comparison. What else can he talk about? Certainly not _sur_ names, because then Byleth will probably ask for his, and Yuri’s not stupid enough to give that away, too. Family, since the topic’s been brought up…?

Wait, why does it even matter anyway? Yuri’s not here to make friends, and neither is this guy, who is still technically The Stranger even if he’s got a name now. They just need to get to the train station together, and that’s it. No need to brainstorm for conversation. Yuri looks back down at his phone, trying to estimate how much longer it’ll take for them to get to the station—

The screen turns black.

This time, Yuri really does run into a lamp post.

Byleth keeps on walking at first, but stops and doubles back to Yuri’s side. “Are you alright?” he asks, but he’s looking at Yuri’s phone rather than Yuri himself. “Uh, what happened?”

“I ran into a lamp post,” Yuri numbly explains.

“No, to your phone.”

“Oh, you’re more worried about my phone than my face!”

“You’ll be fine,” Byleth says, not very reassuringly. “But I don’t think your phone is. What happened?”

“It—” Yuri groans and rubs the reddening mark on his forehead, only _now_ remembering how low on battery it had been just minutes ago. It’s a fairly recent model, but he should have known better than to trust an iPhone. “It must’ve run out of battery. Can we just use yours?”

Byleth awkwardly clears his throat. “Um. It’s, um. It’s… also dead.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish.”

“You… don’t happen to have a charger or anything, do you?” Yuri remembers there being an outlet next to their table in Ashe and Dedue’s café, so maybe… He gives that thought up when Byleth shakes his head. Yuri sighs, running a hand through his messy, uncombed hair. “Guess there’s only one option.”

Byleth nods. “We get one, right?”

“Yeah. There should be a mall somewhere here.” The map had pointed one out, and Yuri figures it’s a big enough building to at least be recognizable from a distance. The idea of taking a detour is bothersome, but can’t be helped.

What he’s not expecting is for Byleth’s nose to scrunch up in confusion. “Mall? We can just look around for a cheap electronics store. I’m sure—”

“Cheap?” Yuri parrots. “Come on. Ever heard of go big or go home?”

Byleth spends the better part of five minutes staring at one of the new iPad models from every possible angle. “This is… fascinating.”

“‘Fascinating?’” Yuri laughs. He assesses the iPad as well, but… _hmm, no, too big to hide._ “What are you, sixty?”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“You never been to a Power Mac Center?” Yuri’s careful to keep his back to the cashier, just in case, but none of the employees look particularly interested in the two of them. Which makes sense—with their rumpled clothes and just-woke-up faces, they both look like something the cat dragged in. “Even though your phone’s an iPhone?”

Byleth shrugs. “It was my sister’s. She said the memory was too small for all her gacha games, so she gave it to me and bought one with 128 GB.”

“What… What does she play?”

“I don’t know. I think she cycles through the same five games all day. Uh, she was talking about one having a sixth anniversary, so she got all these freebies…” Byleth trails off, setting the iPad down. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Yuri mutters. He really needs to add more friends in Heroes,because he doesn’t have enough 5-stars to form a brigade by himself in rival domains… shit, speaking of which, he needs to log in today to get his daily bonus, he ran flat out of orbs after last week’s banner… well. Anyway. “Okay, let’s do this. You go distract the cashier, and I go get the charger. Try not to show your face too much.”

He’s already turning on his heel to go get the nicest-looking charger he can find when Byleth says, “Huh?”

“Huh, huh?”

“Why do I need to distract the person making our transaction…?”

Yuri closes his eyes, counts from one to ten, then turns back to face Byleth. “This is ridiculous. Neither of us have money, so obviously we’re going to need to, you know… _steal?_ ”

Byleth looks like Yuri just told him to eat shit and die. “But that’s…” He blinks, slowly. “Illegal.”

“Well, _you_ think of a legal way to get a charger, then!” Yuri challenges, crossing his arms. “You don’t have money, I don’t have money, both our phones are dead. I’m willing to bet an arm and a leg that this city is too capitalist to have free charging stations either. And I’m very good at bets.”

“Surely there’s a better way?” Byleth weakly suggests.

“Go ahead and drop one on me. I’ll gladly take it.”

Silence.

Yuri shakes his head. “See? I thought so. Look, think of it this way. It’s better we steal from a Power Mac Center run by some billionaire than from a cheap electronics place run by people who actually need the money. Like… we’re going Robin Hood on this one, you get me? Except we’re both Robin Hood and the poor people he’s giving back to.”

“So…” Byleth frowns. “Thieves.”

“Okay, fine,” Yuri sighs. “If you don’t want to do it, I don’t care. Just stay outside and be ready to run if I get caught. Which I won’t. Just don’t try to stop me. This charger is going to be our ticket back home—well, one of many tickets, anyway—so it’s our only choice, alright?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to do it,” Byleth very slowly says, “but I’m worried.”

“Worried?”

“That we’ll be… you know.”

Yuri grins. He can’t deny that he’s a _little_ bit nervous about pulling off a robbery with someone he’s just met, but it’s a _small-scale_ robbery, and it isn’t as if he’s hurting anyone. “Don’t worry. We _won’t_ get caught.”

They get caught. Yuri’s not sure how it happens, but either he had been a tad too suspicious when casually browsing the rack of chargers or Byleth hadn’t looked pretty and distracting enough, but either way an employee shrieks at him and Yuri has to high-tail it out of the place right as the nearby security guard spots him racing down the escalator. “Hey! B—” Yuri catches himself at the last minute and shouts, “Demon king! Uh… king of Hell! Run!”

Byleth, like a complete idiot, runs _after_ him instead of _away_ from him. “I’m coming!” he shouts back, for some reason Yuri can’t even begin to comprehend.

“Two of ‘em,” the security guard giving chase behind them barks into his radio.

Byleth barrels into Yuri on the escalator. “What’s wrong with you!” Yuri bemoans, holding onto the charger for dear life. “You should’ve run the _other_ way, you complete banana, now they’re going to look for both of us—”

“I can’t leave you alone,” Byleth protests, and for a moment he looks so ridiculously earnest that Yuri can’t even reprimand him any further.

Before he can speak, Byleth grabs his arm, _drags_ him off the last few steps of the escalator, and tears through the mall, Yuri flopping behind him like a desperate fish out of water all the while. “Wait!” Yuri yelps, struggling to regain his balance and keep a firm hold on the charger at once. “Slow down, you’re going to dislocate my shoulder or something—”

Byleth skids to a stop. Yuri slams into his back, which marks the second time he’s hit his head today, and Byleth’s so tall that he might as well be a lamp post, too. “Uh… where did we enter from?”

“You have to be _kidding me._ ”

“I-I’m really bad at directions—”

Footfalls thunder behind them, and Yuri whirls around to meet eyes with a half-dozen security guards pushing their way through the bystanders on the escalator they’d just left. “Over there!” one of them shouts. “Get them!”

It’s Yuri’s turn to grab Byleth and pick a random direction, praying to whatever god will listen that they’ll be able to circle back to the UNIQLO store Yuri vaguely remembers seeing at the mall entrance. “W-W-Wait,” Byleth gasps, nearly tripping over his own two feet, “I can’t—hold on—”

“Tell _them_ to hold on,” Yuri hisses. How many escalators did they go up to get to the Power Mac Center anyway? Two? Three? Well, they just went down one, so maybe one more would be fine? Screw it. Yuri pulls Byleth over to an escalator, heaving a sigh of relief when the guards run past them. “What’s the matter with you? You were just running like tonight’s chicken dinner a while ago.”

“Um, might’ve been the adrenaline.” Byleth winces as he bends over the escalator handrail, rubbing his lower back. “I don’t know. It’s been sore since this morning, but it just got worse when I ran…”

Yuri frowns. “Since this morning?”

“It’ll probably be fine soon. Just… yeah, just sore.”

“What on Earth did you do to make your back s—”

Yuri feels his entire world tip slightly out of place. This… can’t be happening. Can it? It’s probably a coincidence. He’s sure there are other reasons why it could be sore… yeah, maybe he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Right? There’s no way it could be because…

“Oh.” Byleth blinks. Yuri sees the exact moment realization dawns on him, because that’s also the exact moment his cheeks go red as tomatoes.

Yuri nods, feeling oddly calm. “I see.” The escalator bumps slightly beneath them. “Very… interesting. I think we may have just gotten an answer to what must have happened last ni—”

“There they are!” someone yells. Yuri jolts violently and nearly falls on his face at the bottom of the escalator—Byleth, merciless as he is, looks too numb to help steady him. The guards are already rushing down from the top, and the guns in their hands do not look very friendly.

Yuri grabs Byleth’s arm once more. “Come on—we’ll have plenty of time to rest _after_ we get out of here!”

It takes a while, and a lot of circumventing the security cameras Yuri picks out in the corners of the ceiling like a professional, but eventually they make it down to the mall’s parking lot—much lower than the entrance they’d entered in, but it’s dark and filled with convenient cars to huddle behind and hide from the guards, who run past them once more. Yuri takes his first deep breath in a while and lets it out through his mouth. “Finally.”

“Mm,” Byleth mumbles, patting his hair down, where the strands have gone all askew. “They’re gone, right? Can we get out of here?”

“Another minute. They’ll probably try searching outside the mall, then come back in once they don’t find us.” Yuri leans against the wall, ignoring the suspicious wet stain on it. “Ugh. I hope they didn’t get our faces well. We were always turning away from them, right? But who can forget my beautiful face…”

Byleth shakes his head. “I think it’ll be fine. Only the cashier really saw me, and everyone says I have a forgettable face.”

“Seriously? But you’re really—”

When Yuri clams up, Byleth frowns and prompts, “Really…?”

“Uh,” Yuri mutters, studiously not thinking _but you’ve got a banging hot face,_ “nothing. How’s your back?”

Predictably enough, Byleth’s cheeks go red once more, and this time not from exertion. “I-I’m fine. It was nothing. It was never hurting in the first place, really.”

“Mhm. Sure.”

“ _Really,_ ” Byleth repeats insistently, his brow furrowing in an absolutely adorable way. Yuri can’t help but wonder if he’s trying to be intimidating, because it isn’t at all working, and all he’s really accomplishing is making Yuri want to tease him more.

They wait another few minutes, mostly catching their breaths, before Yuri deems it safe enough to leave—Byleth throws his coat over Yuri’s shoulders in an attempt for them to look at least slightly different—and they escape from the less crowded entrance, emerging out onto a fortunately empty street. Not so fortunately, their surroundings are entirely different from earlier, and they spend half an hour trying to find Ashe and Dedue’s café before giving up and seeking refuge in a public library instead. The abundance of outlets there make Yuri want to burst into tears from joy.

“Can I go first?” Byleth shyly asks, pulling out his phone (oh, God, it’s a cracked iPhone 4) from his pocket as Yuri sticks the charger in. “I, um, need to text someone.”

Yuri suppresses a frown—he’d really rather get back home as fast and as soon as possible, but… he’s not totally cruel. Byleth makes it sound like it’s an urgent text, anyway. “Yeah, sure thing.” He hands the wire over to Byleth, who accepts it with a grateful smile that makes Yuri turn away.

He’s not used to someone so _earnest,_ and if he’s being honest, he doesn’t like the way it makes him all soft.

“Who are you texting, anyway?” Yuri asks, just to fill up the silence—Byleth looks up from his screen. Yuri can just vaguely see the reflection of the text messaging app in his eyes.

“Um… my supervisor. It’s already afternoon, but I might as well tell him I can’t come to work today anyway, or he’ll get mad at me again…”

“Hmm. Where _do_ you work?”

Unexpectedly enough, Byleth colors once more and ducks his head, avoiding Yuri’s eyes and focusing very intently on his phone, typing out a rapid message. “It’s, um…” He shrugs awkwardly, his gaze sliding away from Yuri’s eyes. “It’s a secret.”

 _A… secret?_ Yuri frowns. What could make some stoic guy all embarrassed like this? _Is he a sex worker or something…?_

Oh, hold that thought. Yuri chances a glance at Byleth from the corner of his eye, taking in his blue eyes, sharp jawline… Alright, it definitely seems possible. He’s got the looks for it, that’s for sure. _Hmm, but he acts so solemn and serious all the time… so maybe he’s a top? Some people are into that. But… maybe that’s also an act he keeps up? So that his clients take weird satisfaction from making him cry? Some people are also into that._ Not to mention Yuri’s empty wallet, and Byleth’s remark about his sore back… which can only be because of something that happened last night…

“Yuri?” Byleth calls—Yuri blinks, not recognizing his name in that voice for a moment. He doesn’t even have the time to properly enjoy how it sounds before Byleth continues with, “You’ve been staring into space for a while now. Uh, anyway, I’m done charging. You go.”

“Ah, uh. That fast?” Yuri clears his throat, taking the wire and plugging his phone in, feeling relief course though his veins when he sees the charging icon pop up on screen.

“I just need enough battery to tell my sister that I might get back late. I’ll be fine. And we’re both in a hurry, so.” He shrugs.

Yuri has a feeling they’re going to regret not charging up fully, but Byleth’s right—they’re both in a hurry to get back. He can’t imagine why Byleth needs to—maybe to report in for work, however late? Definitely possible. Yuri knows just how grueling that business is. As for Yuri himself…

He sighs. If he gets back late… staying out another night would be better than going home at all.

After Yuri gets his phone up to 50 percent (and he gets his daily bonuses), he loads up their route on Google Maps once again—only to blanch when he sees the estimated walking time to the station has _doubled_ now, and apparently they’re stuck in the part of the city where signal is unsteady and prone to cutting off. This is going to be fun. “Okay, well…”

Byleth peers up from his phone. He’s been engaged in some frantic texting for the past several minutes. “Hm?”

“It’s gonna take a while to get there, looks like. And, uh. If we don’t wanna pass by the mall to be safe—” Yuri glances back down at the map. “We’ll have to… take this part, and… okay! Well! It… shouldn’t be that bad. Hehe. I think.”

Byleth frowns. “You don’t have to pretend it isn’t bad. It just sounds worse.”

“Oh, forgive me for thinking of your well-being,” Yuri grumbles.

“Forgiven.”

“You know what? I don’t think I like you very much.”

Byleth shrugs. “I get that a lot. Should we go?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he stands up from his seat and heads towards the door, only giving Yuri another questioning glance when Yuri doesn’t immediately follow.

“Oh, I—yeah, okay, yeah.”

 _I get that a lot?_ What was _that?_ Yuri sighs internally as he keeps his eyes on his phone screen, trying not to be too distracted by Byleth steadily walking beside him. _Was he bothered by what I said…? Great, now I feel bad._ Fine, maybe Yuri should have been a _little_ nicer, but that’s just how he normally speaks to friends. He hadn’t known Byleth would—

Wait. They’re not _friends._ Are they? They just happened to be strangers with a common destination, then later partners in crime. And, well… still strangers, but at least they know each other’s names? Are they still strangers by this point? Okay, maybe acquaintances. Yuri tries not to cross his arms in irritation, lest he draw Byleth’s curiosity.

There’s a certain safety in knowing who he is to someone and who someone is to him. It’s been that way for as long as he can remember. But Byleth—seems to just naturally be Dark and Mysterious, and somehow Yuri wonders if there’s something else to him. Like he’s used to keeping people away, too.

 _A secret occupation…_ could he really be…

“Hey,” Yuri finally decides to ask, “just curious, but are you—”

Byleth’s eyes widen, and for a moment Yuri wonders if he’d somehow anticipated what he was going to ask—but then instead of shushing him or… whatever he would have done, he just whirls around and starts walking in the direction they’d _just_ come from, and the direction that is taking him _further_ from the station. “Wait—where the hell are you going?” Yuri calls, having to take two steps to keep up with one of Byleth’s. He’s never hated his short—no, no, _petite_ —stature more.

“Er—uh—coworkers,” Byleth stammers out, glancing behind him so quickly that it looks like he has an eye tic. “From my, uh, old job. I’d really rather—not have to talk to them—”

Yuri scowls. Now isn’t the time to get all shy and embarrassed about some old coworkers, is it? As long as they walk fast enough, he’s sure there’ll hardly be any time for others to catch up and talk to them, and if they take _another_ detour, Yuri’s sure Google Maps is going to tell them to find their way back themselves. “Come on, you’ll be fine. Let’s just walk real quick, okay? And quit looking behind you, that’s just _asking_ for them to make eye contact. We don’t have time to—”

“You don’t understand,” Byleth hisses, sneaking yet another glance over his shoulder. “I can’t really explain it, but they’re—oh, _no._ ”

Yuri buries his face in his hands. “You made eye contact with them, didn’t you.”

“I think I did,” Byleth squeaks. He turns on his heel and starts walking even faster, and Yuri curses whatever god he must have garnered favor from to be blessed with such unfairly long legs. “Maybe… Maybe if we just run away—”

“ _Heeey!_ Byleth!” someone shouts in the distance, their voice loud enough to be heard even over the din of people and traffic. “Is that you? That _is_ you! Hey, over here!”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Byleth whimpers.

Yuri turns around in time to see two… well, he certainly wasn’t expecting that. Two tall men, scarily bulky, muscular enough to give even Balthus a run for his money… what kind of job did Byleth have before this!? “Uh, hey,” Yuri greets, managing an awkward wave. “Byleth, you… you know these guys?”

Byleth shoots him a pleading look, as if begging him to play along if he says _no,_ but eventually he slowly, _slowly_ turns around to face his ex-coworkers. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Um… hello. It… It’s been a while…”

The men laugh, and one of them reaches over to ruffle Byleth’s hair. “Aww, still as shy as ever!” he crows. “You haven’t changed a bit, huh?”

“Yeah, you too…”

“How’s your new job treating you?” the other one asks. Byleth says nothing for a second, and the two exchange looks and snicker knowingly. Yuri can’t really do anything but stare—what on Earth do they have to laugh about? “You should go back to being one of us, y’know,” the man says, smacking Byleth’s shoulder with far too much force to be considered friendly. Byleth nearly stumbles forward. “We miss having you around!”

Byleth scratches his cheek, rubbing his assaulted shoulder. “I don’t know about that…”

“Aw, come on. I bet it’d be a lot more fun than what you’re doing now!” Another exchange of looks, and another pair of laughs, and—and Yuri looks back at Byleth’s face, because there’s _no way_ Byleth is just going to take this lying down, but all Byleth does is force a short laugh out and give Yuri a look that _screams_ discomfort—

“What are you talking about?” Yuri snaps. The two men jerk back, their hands automatically moving into some sort of reflexive position that look like the result of trained instincts, but Yuri doesn’t have time to worry about that now. “There’s—There’s no shame in what he does! So quit making fun of it!”

“Y-Yuri—”

“In fact, you should be _commending_ him for what he does,” Yuri continues, waving away Byleth’s weak interject. “It isn’t easy! I bet it’s a whole fuck ton harder than whatever the hell you guys do anyway! How about you try it for a day and see how you like it? Yeah, I’d love to see you run away crying!”

“Yuri,” Byleth hisses, a little more insistently, “really, it’s fine—”

“And can’t you see we’re in a _hurry?_ ” Yuri adds, folding his arms over his chest and tilting his chin upwards. It hardly does anything for his intimidation factor considering he’s an entire head shorter than both men, but he at least tries. “Next time you stop someone on the street just to make fun of them—”

“ _Yuri—_ ” Byleth grabs his wrist and tugs him back, and Yuri has no choice but to cut himself off with an undignified yelp and stumble backwards. “S—uh—sorry,” Byleth stutters, looking up at the men. “He… He doesn’t mean that. He’s usually very…” An extremely long pause. “Nice.”

“Nice, huh?” one of the men snort. He cracks his knuckles, loud enough that the passersby around them shoot him fearful glances and cross to the other side of the street. “Who’s this anyway, Byleth? What’s his name— _Yuri?_ ”

Yuri spits at his feet. “Got a problem?”

The other man steps closer, the concrete seeming to rumble under his feet. “You usually go around picking fights with guys like us, or what?”

“Only when you asshats act like—”

“Okay!” Byleth exclaims, grabbing Yuri’s wrist again and pulling him down the street in a rapid walk. “We’re in a hurry! Sorry! Gotta go!”

“Oh, hell no! Get back here!”

Yuri scowls. “They want a fight, I’ll give it to them—”

“You are _not_ giving them anything,” Byleth says—then, without any warning whatsoever, he _bodily_ lifts Yuri over his shoulder like he’s a particularly troublesome sack of rice and _bolts_ down the road at what feels like 60 kilometers per hour.

Yuri tries not to scream, he truly does, but when it feels like his brain is about to leak out of his ears, you can’t fault him for letting out a _little,_ tiny bit surprised squeak. “What—What— _Put me down!_ ”

“Stay still or I might drop you!” Byleth says, instead of, you know, _putting him down._

Yuri whacks his shoulder blades. “Why are you doing this—I can run just fine by myself!”

“Yes, to run _towards_ them—I don’t need you dying on me!”

 _Dying?_ Is he for real? Would those guys _actually_ kill him? Yuri’s pretty sure they’d _hurt_ him, yeah, he’s seen his fair share of scraps and scuffles. But kill him? He scoffs at the idea—jail sounds a lot worse than some stranger they just met randomly insulting them, really. A few good punches sounds like all they could manage, if they could even land one on him. “Put me down and I’ll run by myself. _Away_ from them, I promise.”

Byleth shoots him a suspicious look, but turns a corner into a deserted alleyway and finally sets Yuri back on his wobbly legs. Briefly, Yuri wonders just how ridiculous the two of them had looked on the street, with Yuri yelling like a crazed madman and Byleth literally carrying him over his shoulder like he’s personally ferrying him to the mental institute. How had he even done that? Yuri’s light, but not _that_ light. To think Byleth actually has some muscle under those long sleeves… well, then again, Yuri _had_ caught a very short glance of his bare arms this morning…

“Wait a minute,” Yuri says, “I thought you said your back hurt.”

“Oh. It does, yes.” Byleth blinks. “I-I mean, no, it doesn’t! I didn’t—”

Yuri whacks him again. “You’re going to break your damn back if you do shit like that again! Seriously, you’re acting like those guys were going to shoot me down! I can take a dozen of those idiots on a fight any day!”

“That’s exactly what they could do.”

“That’s… uh, what now?”

“Never mind,” Byleth sighs, shaking his head. “Let’s, um… Let’s just keep going. Hopefully they don’t find u—”

“Byleth!” a familiar voice shouts—they both jolt and turn around to look at the street they had just left, where the two men are standing menacingly. “What’s with you? Come on now, we just wanna have a nice, long talk with your _friend_ here…”

The other man sneers. “Yeah, a friend of Byleth’s is a friend of ours, right? It won’t hurt a bit!”

Byleth curses and shoves Yuri into a run deeper into the alleyway, and Byleth just looks so _desperate_ that Yuri has no choice but to flee. The path is littered with trash and garbage, and Yuri has to leap over the corpses of dead animals more than a few times—Byleth’s always just a step behind him, close enough that Yuri can hear his panting every time he slows down a second. “Keep moving,” Byleth hisses, “we have to—lose them—” and what’s Yuri supposed to say to that? _No?_

He loses count of how many corners they turn, only that they have to be ridiculously far from where they had been before Byleth’s coworkers had approached them—finally, after what feels like a good ten minutes of nothing but running and running, Byleth calls for Yuri to stop. Yuri does so, immediately slumping against a wall—behind him, Byleth’s in a similar position, only he can’t stop looking behind him once again. “Hear anything?” Yuri manages.

Byleth shakes his head. “I… think we lost them. They’re… They’re not much for speed, I remember.”

 _Speed…?_ Yuri thinks about asking just exactly what Byleth’s past job entailed, but he’s too tired to really bother right now. Instead he brings out his phone, which had thankfully not fallen out of his pocket in his brief experience as a sack of rice, and waits for their Google Maps route to load.

It doesn’t.

He checks the signal.

There’s none.

Yuri wants to bang his head against the alley wall. “Let’s get out of here. I can’t get signal. Fuck, where even _are_ we by this point? We better be at least a _little_ closer to the station than before.”

Byleth trails along behind him, looking like a chastised child. “Um… sorry. I didn’t mean to… I mean, that wasn’t…”

“Wasn’t your fault, I know.” They emerge out onto another street, this one far different than the one they had entered from, and Yuri looks back down at his phone—only to nearly throw it onto the pavement. “What the fuck! You have to be fucking kidding me!”

“W-What? What’s wrong?”

“What’s _wrong_ is that we’re another damn hour away from the station!” Yuri snaps, whirling around to shove his phone screen in Byleth’s face. Byleth steps back, blinking rapidly, his eyes zeroing in on the ETA displayed on screen. “Fuck! I’m never fucking getting back in time, I—if you had just—”

He catches himself at the last second, but Yuri’s said enough—Byleth’s eyes shutter, and his face seems to set into what looks like its typical severity. “No, I get it,” he mutters, and—why does this bother Yuri so much, the way he shrinks away from him like he’ll be hurt if he comes any closer? “I get it. I should have… I…”

“I—” Yuri grits his teeth. It’s true that they could’ve gone through that differently, but—fuck, the whole reason they even had to run away was because of Yuri trying to pick a fight, wasn’t it? He still thinks he could’ve beaten those men up, and he’s still pretty sure he did it for a good cause, but looking at Byleth now… “Okay, no, that was me, too. I… Sorry. It wasn’t all you.”

Byleth shrugs wordlessly, keeping his gaze fixed on the ground. “Let’s just go?”

Yuri worries on his lower lip. Surely there’s a way to fix whatever he had broken, but… no. He shouldn’t be worrying about this. They’re just strangers who know each other’s names, and that’s it, right? No point in smoothing over the wound of someone he’ll never see again. “Yeah. Okay.”

The skies darken a few minutes in, and not ten seconds later it starts pouring—the streets empty fast, people hurrying into stores and cafés, but neither Yuri nor Byleth have the privilege of waiting the rain out. They trudge steadily along the sidewalk, slowly getting wetter and wetter, until finally the rain gets too heavy for them to withstand and they duck beneath an overpass like a pair of vagabonds.

 _Hopeless,_ Yuri thinks, wiping at his drenched phone screen with his equally drenched coat. _Hopeless,_ he thinks again, when he realizes the coat, which has taken the brunt of the downpour for him, isn’t even _his—_ it’s Byleth’s, and Byleth doesn’t seem about to ask for it back.

Yuri shrugs the coat off. “Uh, hey. Here. This is yours, right?”

“Keep it on a little longer,” Byleth murmurs. He’s facing away from Yuri, watching the rain come down hard outside. “What if someone recognizes you? Put the hood up, too. You’ll get sick.”

“You…”

But Yuri doesn’t know how to finish that sentence, and so instead he huffs and throws the hood up as instructed.

Minutes turn into a half hour, but still the rain refuses to let up—Yuri checks the time on his phone, not even surprised to see it already nearing five in the afternoon. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take the train to bring them to his stop, either, and how long it’ll take for him to walk the rest of the way back to his place… is he going to make it in time? Is he even going to _make it,_ by this point?

Thunder rumbles threateningly overhead. With a sigh, Yuri joins Byleth in watching the rain, out of lack of things to do. Honestly, Yuri thinks with a bit more spite than usual, it wouldn’t surprise him at all if they somehow ended up having to run away from something else agai—

“Yuri,” Byleth says, softly, almost too soft to be heard over the rain—“Do you know those guys?”

“Hn?” Yuri glances up, briefly scanning the street—the rain obscures too much to really see anything clearly, but he can just make out a small group of men standing under a restaurant awning nearby. If he squints, they look a little like they’re whispering among each other. “Can’t really see. Why?”

Byleth tilts his head. “They’ve been looking at you for a while.”

Shit. Yuri barely knows anyone outside of his own circle, which can only mean two things: they’re either authorities, or they know him _personally._ Since they’re not wearing uniforms, they can’t be the former… and now that they’re starting to come closer and starting to look a lot more familiar than Yuri expected, they can only be…

“Boss!” one of the men squawks. “That _is_ him! He’s the asshole from that gang who beat you up last time!”

“Aw, fuck,” Yuri says, just as the group of men turn into a raging group of men all heading right for them. He grabs Byleth’s wrist and tears down the street, his heels slipping and sliding along the drenched street. “Run!”

There’s no time to think—they duck into the first alleyway they see, because that helped them last time and Yuri’s a natural at losing people chasing him in dark alleys. Something falls out of his pocket, but Yuri can’t be bothered to get it back—he’s sure they’ll be fine without it—and just as he turns a corner, two of the gang members leap out to intercept, grinning as they charge at him with flashing knives—

Yuri’s no stranger to fights like these. He’s been in more than his fair share, if he’s being perfectly honest.

But no matter how much he prides himself on his finesse, he’s quite sure nothing could possibly have compared to how Byleth launches himself at the men and _slams_ into them head-on, crashing against one man and sending the other stumbling with a throwaway kick to the torso. Their knives clatter noisily onto the ground; Byleth kicks one away and plucks the other one up, leveling it above the throat of the man beneath him. “Out of our way,” he growls. _Growls._ The sound sends shivers down Yuri’s spine.

“F-Fuck! Who are you?” the other man shouts, scrambling back onto his feet and backing away, nearly slipping on one of the puddles.

Byleth doesn’t answer, only shoves his cornered victim of sorts against the wall and tugs Yuri along with him as they run further into the alley again—it takes Yuri several long seconds and around three right turns before he manages to ask, “What the hell was _that?_ ”

“Um—” Byleth blanches. “Just, er, a bit of. Training? I guess?”

“Like, martial arts? No, that shit didn’t look like martial arts at all—” They stumble out onto yet another unfamiliar street, and Yuri’s eyes widen when he catches sight of a sign recognizable anywhere. “Over here!”

Byleth follows him down the dark, barely-lit steps, and Yuri flings the door at the bottom open. The noise inside almost immediately drowns out the heavy footfalls from behind; even this early in the evening, there are already people singing and dancing and doing fuck-all in the crowded bar. Yuri’s used to the clamor, but when he turns around and sees Byleth frozen in place like a deer caught in several pairs of headlights, he almost tears all his beautiful hair out. “Come on,” Yuri urges, tugging his wrist. “It’ll be easier to hide in a place full of people, alright?”

“I—” Byleth swallows, and when he grabs onto Yuri’s wrist back, Yuri’s more than a little surprised at how shaky his grip is. “Okay,” he manages. “S—Sorry.”

Is it too noisy? Yuri frowns. He doesn’t really understand, but he isn’t so monstrous as to keep Byleth in a place he doesn’t like for too long, even if they really don’t have much choice. Behind them, the door is already swinging open again for the mafia members to barge in (the rest of the people around them seem too tipsy to notice the knives, unfortunately), and Yuri’s senses kick into heightened overdrive. “Follow me.”

“But—it’s—there are too many,” Byleth stammers, stumbling over both his own and other people’s feet as he struggles to keep up with Yuri. “Yuri,” he says, panic creeping into his voice, “don’t go.”

Yuri doesn’t want to, but he turns around anyway. Byleth’s looking at him with such a pleading look in his eyes that Yuri has no idea what he’s supposed to say— _don’t be so dramatic?_ No, that sounds absolutely terrible. _I’m not going anywhere?_ Could work, but technically false. _Just keep close?_ Also works, but rather difficult when the bar is getting rowdier and more crowded by the second.

“We have to,” Yuri finally settles. And, despite how strange it makes him feel, he shifts his grip down from Byleth’s wrist to Byleth’s hand instead, interlocking their fingers together and squeezing tight. “But I won’t go where you can’t follow. Just—Just look at me, okay? Look at me only.” Something about the words feels oddly familiar, as if Yuri’s said them before, but he can’t quite recall when or why, or with whom.

Something comes to life in Byleth’s eyes, and after a hesitant second, he nods. Yuri just barely has time to nod back before he meets the eyes of one of the mafia members over Byleth’s shoulder and he has to start weaving through the crowd, pushing and shoving and generally getting people _out of the way._ Byleth follows behind, and Yuri doesn’t have to look at him to know he’s got his gaze fixed on the back of Yuri’s head—the intensity makes itself known well enough.

It takes what feels like ages until Yuri manages to throw an unlocked door open and usher Byleth into the private room. It’s a little small and more than a little dusty, which makes sense—the bar hadn’t looked very fancy from both the outside and the inside—but Yuri doesn’t mind as long as they’re out of sight… and the noise outside is completely blocked out.

He sighs in relief and slumps against one of the couches, leaning against the backrest; beside him, Byleth takes a tentative seat on the other end. The silence makes Yuri’s ears ring, but he can’t bring himself to care when Byleth looks like he’s starting to calm down. “Five minutes,” Yuri manages. “I’m sure there’s a back entrance close by. We’ll go out there.” He shoots Byleth a look that he refuses to believe is concerned. “You’re… uh, you’re fine now, right?”

Byleth takes a deep breath then nods, this one much more confident than the last one, and turns his annoyingly cute smile on Yuri. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I don’t do well in… places like that.”

“Crowds and stuff?”

“And loud noises in small places,” Byleth adds, looking down at his lap. He fiddles with a loose thread on his shirt for a moment. “I’ve been getting better, but… it’s like… I can’t decide what to focus on. So it sort of just… goes everywhere. If that makes sense.”

It doesn’t, really, but Yuri sort of understands anyway. “I get it. Don’t worry—we’ll just have to go out one more time, and then we’ll be back on the street.” _And probably somewhere completely different from a while ago,_ Yuri mentally adds. God, he should probably load their route on Google Maps for, like, the third time while they’re already here. There’s bound to be free Wi-Fi to take advantage of—

Footsteps. Yuri freezes. “Boss!” someone yells from outside, close enough that the door and walls don’t cancel the sound out. “You looked in here yet?”

Yuri leaps off the couch, but there’s nowhere to hide in the room—the space beneath the couch and above the floor is too narrow, the table is too high off the ground, no curtains or windows—

Byleth grabs his arm, and Yuri whirls around to sputter something out, though he’s not quite sure what he would have said—the only thing going through his mind at the moment is a stream of increasingly panicked thoughts, so many that he can’t even pick one out to verbalize. Being trapped is the one thing Yuri hates the most, when he prides himself on always being able to find a way out of anything, and to have driven not just himself but another person into a corner—

“I’m going to try something,” Byleth says, gently nudging Yuri closer to the wall until his back is pressed up against it. Byleth’s quite a bit taller than him, and this position effectively hides Yuri’s entire face and body from anyone who’ll enter through the door, but—

“Don’t panic,” Byleth adds, probably at the look on Yuri’s face, and then—just as the door slams open—he leans in to push their lips together.

For several mind-numbing seconds, Yuri can’t think of anything but Byleth’s mouth on his. It’s… He tastes of strawberry pancakes and bitter coffee, which is not at _all_ the ideal combination—

But Yuri doesn’t really have time to focus on anything else when the person standing at the doorway yelps and hurriedly slams the door back shut. Byleth draws back within the same second, not bothering to give Yuri a second glance as he looks behind him. “Okay,” Byleth says, completely ignoring how Yuri is staring at him and trying not to melt into a puddle on the floor, “I guess they’re—”

“So? Who’s in there?”

“I-I don’t know, just a couple—”

The door swings open again. Yuri grabs Byleth by the collar of his shirt and pulls him in for another kiss hard enough to leave bruises on their lips. It’s Byleth’s turn to flail uselessly for a moment before he remembers himself and kisses back—Yuri forgets to wrinkle his nose at the taste of his lunch, mostly because he’s thinking _if we’re pretending we might as well go all-out_ and then he’s not really thinking at all when he wraps his arms around Byleth’s neck to tangle his hands in his hair, one hand gripping the long strands at the base of his neck and the other pulling _hard_ at his choker.

Byleth shudders against him, breath hot against Yuri’s lips when he pulls slightly back for air—then presses close again, tongue licking at the inside of Yuri’s cheek. Which is entirely unnecessary, because it isn’t as if the mafia members are going to come up to check exactly how they’re kissing, but Yuri forgets to complain about that too when Byleth’s knee comes up to dig in between Yuri’s legs, and though Yuri somehow manages to keep himself from grinding harder against Byleth’s knee, he _does_ accidentally let out a mortifying moan that the men standing by the door could _not_ have been deaf to.

The door slams closed once more, with a hint more desperation and a tad more finality than last time. Even so, it takes them another second to separate from each other—and not even fully at that, when Byleth draws back just enough to catch his breath and Yuri forgets he’s still got his arms on Byleth’s shoulders.

For a moment, all they really do is stare at each other, breathing heavily— _his eyes are so blue,_ Yuri catches himself thinking, unable to look away from the curve of his lashes or the swell of his lips.

“H… Huh,” Yuri finally manages, when the silence becomes too much to bear. “Well, that… that was…”

“It looks like they’re gone,” Byleth says, taking several steps back so quickly that the backs of his knees hit the arm of the couch behind him and he topples back onto the couch with a pathetic yelp. “O-Ow.”

Yuri wants to simultaneously laugh his guts out and let the Earth swallow him whole. Had he just done that? Had he just pretend-kissed a sort-of stranger to avoid death by a rival gang? Yuri had always snickered at the shitty romance novels Hapi flipped through whenever she was bored, but he’d never imagined his life would end up going exactly like one of the stupid things. What’s he even supposed to say now—

“Shit,” he realizes, “you helped me out again.”

Byleth looks confused for a moment, blinking up at him from the couch, before he sits up and shakes his head. “You don’t have to think of returning the favor…”

Yuri scoffs. “Why? ‘Cause I already did? Hah.”

The silence that follows is uncomfortably long. Yuri keeps his gaze fixed on a weird-colored stain on the wall to look as cool and composed as possible, but when he sneaks a glance at Byleth, his cheeks are a blotchy red. Which leads to Yuri’s face starting to heat up, too, and now Yuri wants to curse at himself. What are they? Virgins? Jesus. “Whatever,” he hurries to say, walking over to flop down on the other side of the couch. “Just, uh, thanks. Really, thanks. They would’ve murdered me if they managed to catch me—ah, fuck.” He mashes the home button, but his phone screen remains stubbornly black. “Died again. Is there an outlet here?”

Byleth hops up, looking eager to do something. “Um—over there.”

By the corner of the room is an outlet innocuously hidden behind a fake potted plant, which Yuri promptly knocks over to get to the outlet. “Cool. We can wait for them to leave and also get this shit char—”

His pocket is empty.

Yuri takes a deep breath, tells himself everything will be fine, and digs around a little more. Still nothing. Right! Other pocket, then. He fishes the wire out, feeling relief bloom in his chest, but nothing else. The relief instantly withers into cold fear.

Something had fallen out of his pocket earlier. But it… it had probably been, like. A tin of breath mints or something. Never mind that he didn’t even bring one yesterday. Or… Or his earrings, because surely he had taken them off before falling asleep last night. Never mind that he can definitely still feel the hoops hanging off his ears. Or… Or…

Okay. Yeah. Fuck it. “Byleth?”

“Mm?”

“I think I dropped the charger.”

There is an extremely long pause. “I see,” Byleth says, without a hint of inflection in his voice.

Yuri flings the wire against the wall with a frustrated shout—it bounces off to hit his chest and topples onto the floor. “ _Fuck_ this! Fuck this! I’m not stealing another Goddamn charger.” He throws the wire again. The process repeats. “It wouldn’t even make for a good fucking gift, fuck’s sake.”

It’s silent for another few seconds until Byleth turns to face him. Yuri doesn’t particularly want to look at him, because he’s sure anger and irritation and most of all fucking _disappointment_ are all he’s going to see, but—

When he turns around, Byleth just looks… himself. Byleth just looks Byleth. He tilts his head, looking curious, and asks, “Gift?”

“You…” Yuri stares at him. “Aren’t you. Uh. Mad?”

Byleth shrugs. “We all make mistakes. I did. You did. What’s the point in getting mad? It can’t bring the charger back.”

“Th—That’s… That’s true, I guess, but—”

“What were you saying? About a gift?”

Yuri can’t bring himself to speak for another few seconds—because what kind of person is _that_ nice? Yuri’s just lost one of their tickets back home because he hadn’t thought to secure it in his pocket, and… and he’s just going to say it’s fine, because _we all make mistakes_ or whatever, and…

And, fuck, what kind of person is this guy!? “Why won’t you get mad?” Yuri shouts, throwing the wire at Byleth—it bounces off the back of the couch instead, but Byleth catches it before it falls on the floor. “Go ahead and shout,” Yuri grumbles, casting around for something to stare at and deciding on the fallen potted plant next to him. “I… I know you want to. Don’t act all cool and forgiving or whatever.”

“I told you. I’m not mad.” Footsteps, and then Byleth drops onto the floor beside Yuri, folding his legs up to prop his chin on his knees. “You… weren’t mad a while ago, when I didn’t follow right away… but, um, either way, I still wouldn’t get mad. It’s not a big deal, Yuri.”

“Not a big deal?” Yuri spits, forcing the heat gathering in his eyes to stop before they spill over. “How are we going to get back _now?_ ”

“We can ask for directions…”

“What if it’s too far away? _Again?_ It’s 6pm! I—” Yuri shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. If it had been messy before, it’s completely ruined now. “I’m never going to get back in time. Fuck.”

Byleth inches closer until Yuri doesn’t have to look up to meet curious blue eyes. “In time for what?”

“It’s…” Yuri sighs. “Today’s my mom’s birthday. I don’t have the money to get her a gift, and now I don’t even have the decency to show up.” He’d texted her earlier and told her he’d be back home late, but what if Yuri can’t even get back before the day ends? He could at least show up with a nice gift in hand, but the iPad earlier had been way too big to lug around, and nothing else had really stood out.

Byleth hums. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course. How would you?”

“You didn’t look like a…” Byleth trails off. “You know.”

“A mama’s boy?” Yuri snorts. When Byleth nods, an amused smile on his face, Yuri shoves his shoulder. He’s fairly sure Byleth’s strong enough to resist, but Byleth lets himself fall onto his side anyway. “Whatever. Now you know. What about you? You said you were in a hurry to get back too.”

“Well… don’t laugh, okay?”

“Ugh, I just told you something that would have every other guy making fun of me for days. Go on.” Yuri vaguely wonders if it’s got something to do with his job. Considering his career often calls for the nighttime, he could probably get to work on time if they somehow find their way to the station, right? At least one of their days could be salvaged.

Byleth ducks his head, clearly embarrassed. “Um, my advisory class is performing a play they’ve been working on for months today. My supervisor changed the schedule to start it a little later for my sake, but if I don’t get back before seven—”

“Wait. Wait one second.” Yuri feels like the planet is tumbling down the steepest cliff in outer space, if they have cliffs out there. They probably do not. Yuri does not care. “Advisory… class?”

Byleth blinks. “Yeah. I’m a teacher.”

“You’re a—” Yuri leaps to his feet, not quite sure why—suddenly all he wants to do is bounce around the room like a deranged beach ball on steroids. “A _what?_ ”

“A teacher. I teach elementary students.”

“A _what!?_ ”

“A teach—”

“Okay! I get it! Stop repeating yourself!”

“But you asked—”

“ _Shhh._ ” Yuri paces the entire length of the room exactly twelve times under two minutes in complete silence before finally speaking again. “A teacher. A _teacher?_ You mean I was valiantly defending the honor of a _teacher?_ This whole damn time!?”

“Do you not like teachers?” Byleth weakly asks. He hasn’t gotten up, and is mostly just watching Yuri with a hint of concern in his gaze.

Yuri whirls on him, and Byleth jolts backwards. “That’s not it! I just—all this time I thought you were a—a—uhh…”

Byleth just looks confused at first, before realization dawns on him and amusement dances across his lips. “Oh? What did you think I was, Yuri?” he asks, and _surely_ it should be illegal for him to sound that provocative while teasing, right? Yuri’s just imagining this and Byleth’s probably, _probably_ not flirting, right?

“You… You go shut up,” Yuri huffs, flopping back down on the floor next to Byleth, not bothering to keep a safe distance between them. They’ve shared a bed, held hands, kissed, and probably did a whole fuck ton more last night. What’s the point? If either of them have a contagious disease, it’s over for the other one. “Stupid… a _teacher._ With your face? I bet all the kids cry when they see you.”

“Hmm. I don’t know. They always tell me I’m their favorite.”

“Huh. Kids these days know how to suck up to their teachers so easily,” Yuri scoffs. Byleth still just looks amused, which bothers Yuri so immensely that he grabs onto the next conversation topic he thinks of. “Then—those old coworkers of yours, no way were they teachers too, right? What were you before?”

Byleth looks thoughtful for a moment, as if he’d forgotten his past occupation somehow, then says, without a smidgen of emotion, “A hitman.”

For the second time within the past five minutes, Yuri leaps straight off the floor and onto his feet. “A _what,_ now!” Fuck, _that_ explains how well he’d fended off those mafia members from earlier—their occupations were like cousins in the family tree of Shady Careers! “Jesus, why were you even being all shy and going all ‘it’s a secret’ or—hey, what the hell? If you were a hitman, why were you acting all reluctant about stealing a stupid overpriced Apple charger? I think your past job was a _lot_ more illegal than that!”

Byleth winces. “I-It wasn’t for very long. I only took up a few jobs before I got fired.”

“F… Fired.” You can get fired for being a hitman? Is there like, an agency of hitmen? Yuri’s sure shit like these happen in movies, but he always ended up falling asleep whenever he watched something like this with Balthus, so he’d never absorbed much information. If he should even be absorbing information from movies. “What did you do? Fall in love with your target?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that,” Byleth assures. For some reason, that actually does reassure Yuri somehow. At least he doesn’t sound like he’s pulling all this out of a shitty movie plotline. “My father retired, and they needed someone to take his place before they found a better substitute. So they got me.”

“Father. You mean… the same father who named you after a king of Hell.”

“Mhm.”

Yuri wishes he were more surprised about all this. “So… Okay. Okay. So you… So you went from being a hitman to teaching seven-year-olds how to count.”

Byleth makes a face. “I focus more on art, really. But yes. I, um, I dropped out of college so I could take Father’s job for a while… then I thought about going back, but then a new teaching position opened up in his old high school nearby, so I figured I might as well.” He smiles, and Yuri can’t help but stare—Byleth so rarely smiles, as if his features were designed primarily to look stern and serious all the time, that when he does smile it’s a radiant thing. “My sister’s the opposite. She’s finishing up her second degree right now, actually.”

“Wow,” Yuri says. He’s not sure what else he’s supposed to add. “You really love your family, don’t you?”

Byleth nods. “Is that bad?”

“You’re asking me? ‘Course not.” Besides, Yuri can respect anyone who apparently juggled five different gacha games while finishing up a college degree. “Hey, uh, I’m pretty sure those guys are gone now. Wanna try heading out? It’ll be real quick, don’t worry.”

Byleth looks hesitant for a moment, but nods and stands up, offering his hand for Yuri to pull himself up with as well. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Unfortunately, there’s no back entrance conveniently tucked away for Yuri to find—or if there is, it’s hidden behind some secret mechanism or whatever, because Yuri searches every nook and cranny and finds absolutely nothing—so they’re forced to creep back out into the main area of the bar to leave. Byleth squeezes Yuri’s hand hard enough to hurt, but the noise is… a little more bearable this time around, Yuri thinks. Even though it’s getting later, the rain outside seems to have let up, and there are fewer people making a ruckus in the place.

“We sure learned a lot about each other today,” Yuri says, trying to get Byleth’s attention to focus on just his voice. As expected, Byleth looks at him immediately, and Yuri can practically feel the concentration radiating off of him in waves. “Considering we literally met today, too.”

“Yesterday.”

“Eh?”

“We met yesterday,” Byleth corrects, glancing over at the bar counter.

“Oh, yeah, okay,” Yuri allows, following his gaze. One of the bartenders slides a drink over to a customer, who drains the glass in one gulp. “But that doesn’t count. I don’t—”

And then, like a speeding truck crashing straight onto him, Yuri _remembers._

It isn’t much at first, just a brief flash of an image in his head—until the image clears up and Yuri sees, with startling clarity, the bar he had been in last night. To be specific, _this bar._ He recognizes the counter, the bottles on the shelf, the exact seat he’d been sitting on, the fucking _drink_ he’d had—nearly everything, except for how much money he’d had in his wallet.

For a moment he forgets he’s with Byleth and feels himself shifting backwards through time until he’s back in his seat at the bar, drinking alone like a total loser. Right—Balthus had recommended the place because of its _ambiance_ or something, as if Balthus even cared about that shit—but it was his first time going to this part of the city last night, so even then he’d been relying on Google Maps for most of the way. Then… Then… Something had happened, right? For him to have met Byleth—

 _Right!_ Someone had tried to hit on him. A nice-looking guy, Yuri remembers, tall but not too tall, with perfectly-coiffed hair and a dimpled smile. And Yuri had humored him because he’s just a little bit soft for cute faces, but… right, but then he’d caught the guy slipping something in his drink like a total creep, and suddenly Yuri knew he couldn’t trust those dimples. So he’d tried to make it clear he wasn’t interested, but then the man only started getting pushier and pushier with every hint Yuri dropped, and then…

And then he’d happened to look over the man’s shoulder and made eye contact with someone else sitting by a table. Someone with the bluest eyes Yuri had ever seen.

He doesn’t remember, exactly, how Byleth had _known,_ only that Byleth had immediately stood up and confronted the man, and then the man started shouting, and then there had been a fight that ended up with half the bar crowding around the two of them while Byleth beat the man half-unconscious. Yuri distinctly remembers cheering Byleth on. After that… they had talked, hadn’t they? Fuck, Yuri can’t remember exactly what about, though. Maybe something to do with their jobs… the next chronological scene in his head is Byleth pinning him up against some poor building, and an old lady slamming her window open and telling them to get a room.

Then the backseat of a taxi, Yuri practically grinding away on Byleth’s lap—then stumbling up the stairs of that dingy hotel, and… holy shit. Holy shit!

“I d-don’t really… remember… much…”

 _Look at me only._ Had Yuri said that, last night? Had he tipped Byleth’s chin up to force him to meet his eyes and said that? And Byleth’s back had been sore this morning, so how long had they gone at it to make him _that_ sore? He wracks his head for more, but there’s nothing— _nothing_ else about last night, _nothing_ else about _what they did in the hotel room!_ Did he make Byleth cry!? Did he get to see those beautiful blue eyes all bloodshot while Byleth was on his knees, choker hooked on Yuri’s fingers, those pretty lips begging to be rewarded!? Yuri _needs_ to know, for fuck’s sake!

“What…” Byleth squints at him, and Yuri’s soul seems to zoom straight back to the present like cheap CGI in a time travel movie. “What are you thinking about?”

“Do you remember anything from last night?” Yuri blurts out, dragging Byleth out of the bar before he gets distracted again. It’s dark when they walk out onto the open street, and the lamp posts are just beginning to light up.

Byleth frowns. “Bits and pieces. None of which really make sense.”

“Okay. I’ve got a really important question then.”

“Go ahead?”

“Do you remember crying.”

The longest few seconds of Yuri’s life pass in complete, utter silence.

“I _said_ this is a _really important question,_ ” Yuri repeats, stomping his foot for emphasis (and to jar Byleth out of the dazed stupor he seems to have been put into), “so it’d be great if you answered my _really important questio—_ ”

“Yes,” Byleth suddenly says, voice extremely small.

Yuri falters. “Wait, what?”

In an even smaller voice, small enough to barely be heard over the traffic, “Yes.”

“Oh.” Yuri reels back. “My. _God._ ”

“N-Not that I remember why or how,” Byleth hastily adds. He’s still holding onto Yuri’s hand, Yuri belatedly realizes, and his grips turns vice-like as if to convince Yuri of his side. “Just—I just remember it happening. No idea when. Or where. Or with who.”

Yuri almost keels over from laughter. “ _Byleth,_ ” he says, his other hand coming up to turn Byleth’s head back to face him, “what makes you think I can’t make it happen again, huh?”

The response is immediate and gratifying—Byleth blushes so hard he looks ready to spontaneously combust. “Can we—w-why don’t we keep looking for the station? It’s bound to come up if we keep searching, right? C-Come on. Let’s go. Um, we—we can’t waste time.”

 _Aww. He’s cute when he’s flustered._ “‘Course. Whatever you say.” Yuri pulls Byleth back to keep him from going any further, and Byleth stumbles a little, shooting Yuri an adorably confused look. “But I remember now—this is the same bar we were at last night, and that wasn’t the way to the station. Over here—I think I got it.”

It doesn’t take them hours. It barely even takes them minutes—a few turns and one recognizable building later, and Yuri’s laughing freely as he pulls Byleth into the train station just as he spots the wall clock above strike 6:10pm. “I remember! The train ride was less than half an hour!” Yuri grins as Byleth lends him his train pass to scan. “We’re gonna get back in time. You’re not gonna miss your stupid class’s play, Byleth!”

Byleth smiles—his typical small one at first, before it grows into a size that Yuri thinks must be normal for others but is _huge_ for someone as generally non-expressive as Byleth. “Yeah,” he says, softly. They aren’t holding hands anymore, but Byleth’s fingers brush the tops of Yuri’s knuckles anyway. “Thanks to you, Yuri.”

As soon as Yuri spots two empty seats beside each other on the train, he drags Byleth over to collapse upon them—Yuri is _quite_ tired of all the running around for today, thank you very much. He usually finds it impossible to fall asleep on trains, considering how rough and bumpy the ride is, but the exhaustion catches up to him quick, and before long he’s nodding off on Byleth’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” Byleth says, when Yuri sluggishly lifts his head up. “I don’t mind. I’ll wake you up.”

 _You don’t even know my stop,_ Yuri forgets to say—he drops his head back on Byleth’s shoulder and savors the warmth. When he closes his eyes and blocks out everything else… it almost feels like this morning, snuggling closer to the warmth in his bed.

He doesn’t know how long it is before he wakes up after a particularly rough jostle, only that it thankfully isn’t his stop yet—Yuri blinks the drowsiness away and moves to sit up straight, but a weight on his head keeps him from doing so. It’s… _Byleth’s_ head, he realizes with a start—Byleth’s gone and fallen asleep on him, after saying he’d ‘wake Yuri up,’ the liar. Well. Yuri supposes he’s just going to have to deal with the growing stiffness in his neck later.

 _Later._ What comes later? After everything they went through today, will Yuri just… never see Byleth again? Yuri isn’t much of a love-at-first-sight kind of guy—the only times he ever willingly subjected himself to movies along those plotlines are the nights Constance gets movie-picking privileges, and every time Yuri always wants to claw his eyes out—but… Well, this, whatever _this_ is, may not be love, but there’s certainly some kind of connection between them, that much he’s sure Byleth can tell too.

Maybe… if Yuri can somehow keep in touch with him…

The train judders to a stop, and Yuri sighs when the doors slide open. He has to get out now, even before he’s made a decision, or… or even gotten Byleth’s number or something, and, well, what can he do now? “Byleth,” he mutters, gently shaking the man awake, “hey—it’s my stop. I gotta go.”

“Mmh?” Byleth blinks blearily, casting a glance at the scrolling text on the display. “Oh.”

“Listen,” Yuri says, doing his best to talk as fast as possible to get everything he wants to say out before the doors close, “I don’t know if you remember anything else from last night, but I wanna say thanks, because—well, you really helped me out back there in the bar, and I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if you weren’t there. I-I probably wouldn’t even be here, haha. Uh, anyway, I’m just really glad we met, and—if you have, like, a Facebook or something, I wouldn’t mind—”

Byleth stands up, tugging Yuri up with him, and heads towards the train doors. “It’s my stop, too,” Byleth says, the moment the doors close and the train zooms away. “What a coincidence. Um, sorry, I didn’t really hear much of what you said… could you say it again?”

Yuri is at his fucking limit.

As he predicted, it’s only been twenty minutes since the train left, leaving Byleth with another half hour before his class play starts—the school isn’t a long walk from the station, apparently, and Yuri casually follows him to the academy, latching onto every conversation topic he can think of. It’s not as if… well… alright, he _really_ doesn’t want to leave him just yet. He at least wants to see _where_ Byleth works, in case he can, well, accidentally drop by sometime…

“Wait a minute.” Yuri skids to a stop and stares at the name of the school imprinted on the sign, as well as its official seal. “What the hell? This was my old high school!”

Byleth blinks. “Really? I didn’t know you were rich. This is a pretty expensive private school.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Scholarship.” Yuri shakes his head. “Whatever. Okay, well, uh. Guess I’ll go now?”

Byleth pauses in front of the school gates, where he had just waved at the gatekeeper standing by. “You’re not coming?” He looks painfully confused, as if he’d never even considered the possibility of Yuri leaving.

“H— _Huh._ ”

Byleth flushes an adorable shade of red. “O-Oh, right, you probably have to get back to your mother—um, sorry, I’ll just—uh—”

“No!” Yuri exclaims, stepping forward and grabbing Byleth’s hand before he can enter the gates—Byleth lets himself be pulled back again, and the way he looks at Yuri, his hair all astray and his blue eyes wide and moonlit—good God, Yuri should _not_ have done this. Now all he can focus on is how pretty those lips had looked when they’d swollen up from a kiss or two. “Uh, my mom—she’s expecting me late. And I still don’t have a gift. So… y-yeah, fine, if you insist, I-I’ll go watch! Not like I wanted to or anything.”

Byleth looks pleasantly surprised at first, before his expression softens into a now-familiar smile. “Okay. Come on, then.”

The school is exactly the same as Yuri remembers it from, ugh, some eight years ago? There’s hardly anything different, and even the auditorium doesn’t look like it’s gone through any much-needed renovations. The sound system is as awful as ever, for one. When they get to Byleth’s seat in the front row, five minutes before the play’s supposed to start, Yuri runs straight into—

“Oh, Byleth,” Byleth says, his whole face brightening like a child being given a new toy. “I didn’t know you were coming!”

The woman who looks _exactly_ like Byleth smiles—okay, they at least don’t smile the same. For some reason, Yuri thinks she must smile a little more frequently. “Exams finished early. But who’s this, Byleth? You didn’t tell me you were bringing a… _friend,_ ” she says knowingly.

Byleth smiles at Yuri, and somehow he ends up looking brighter than the stage lights. “Yuri, this is my twin sister,” he introduces, voice so full of cheer that Yuri’s not sure if he’s still talking to the Byleth he’d gotten to know today. “Byleth, this is Yuri. He’s, um, the guy I mentioned in my text. He helped us get back home.”

“You’re _both_ named Byleth?” Yuri yelps.

“We get that a lot.” Byleth—ugh, _sister_ Byleth—stretches her arm out for a handshake Yuri returns. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for helping my brother out. I _told_ him not to go to that bar, but after all that reassuring me that he’d only drink orange juice, he ended up getting blackout wasted after all.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Haha.” Yuri scratches his cheek, taking the seat next to Byleth—fuck, _his_ Byleth—wait, Byleth isn’t _his—_ oh, screw it. “No problem. He helped me out a bunch of times, too. Uh, he told me you… you…” Shit, the only thing Yuri can remember right now is that she owns a 128 GB phone, a detail he’d retained out of a jealous sort of awe. “You play Granblue, don’t you?”

Sister Byleth’s eyes widen. Considering her eyes are already much wider than her brother’s, the size they grow to make Yuri understand why authors describe widened eyes as the size of saucers. “No way! You do too?”

“Uh, no, but I do play Heroes—”

“You have to add me,” sister Byleth chirps, whipping out both her phone and—holy shit—a _powerbank,_ complete with wire. Yuri doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so beautiful in his life. “Since Byleth didn’t reply to my last text, you probably don’t have battery, don’t you? Here, use this. I’ve been too busy building up my units to make friends properly!”

The moment the charging icon pops up on the screen of Yuri’s phone is the moment he never knew would lead to his spiritual healing. “Me too! Who’s your support unit right now? I really need some friends for rival domains, I keep accidentally getting low-tier 5-stars—”

“Check it out. +10 Altina. The free one we got this campaign finally gave me my last merge.”

“Shit! That’s fucking crazy. I’ve got mostly dagger units right now, and, like, _half_ of them have Attack banes. If not, they’re _Speed_ banes.” Yuri’s best unit right now is a fully-merged, maxed Dragonflower 5-star Leon he built from the ground up, because he’d fallen head over heels for his design, but something about that is too embarrassing to tell a stranger’s sister.

Byleth looks at them like he’s not sure who to be more worried for. “Your own brother ran out of battery, and you won’t even lend him your powerbank…”

“Oh, hush,” sister Byleth says, smacking his arm with the same strength Byleth’s old coworkers had earlier. “Be glad I’m here at all. Oh, look, it’s starting!”

The audience quiets as the curtains on stage open—Yuri adores musicals, but this seems to be an original play rather than an adaptation, and so he settles back to watch. He gets bored five minutes in, as expected—every one of these kids except for one girl with long hair is absolutely _terrible_ at acting—but when he glances over at Byleth next to him, he can’t help but smile at the pride shining clear in those blue eyes.

“You really like kids, huh?” Yuri whispers during one of the blackouts.

Byleth looks back at him, his smile infectious. “Yeah,” he murmurs. “You remember… those guys from back then, my coworkers… they kept telling me I shouldn’t have become a teacher. I used to think they were right, at first, because the students were always noisy and it was always hard to get them to quiet down and focus, but…”

“But?” Yuri prompts, when Byleth trails off and seems to forget he had been in the middle of speaking. He shifts closer, glad there isn’t an armrest between them, until a little lift of his leg and he’d be nearly on top of Byleth’s lap.

“But it feels nice, when they do finally listen to you.” Byleth tilts his head again, that little quirk of his that Yuri first found odd but now finds annoyingly endearing. “Thank you for valiantly defending my honor as a teacher earlier, by the way. I don’t think I got to thank you for that.”

“Hmm…” Yuri grins, just as the lights begin to flicker on onstage again. “I can think of a few ways you could _thank_ me, Byleth.”

Byleth’s cheeks redden, visible even in the darkness. “W-What are you—”

“Oops. Let’s focus on the show. Wouldn’t wanna let your students see you distracted.” Yuri draws back, snickering to himself when Byleth opens his mouth, closes his mouth, and then leans back in his seat with an embarrassed huff.

The play is god-awful. Yuri is fairly sure he has never watched a worse play in his life. But afterwards, when the children all leap offstage and crowd around their teacher, babbling gibberish only Byleth seems to properly understand, Yuri supposes that wasn’t a complete waste of forty minutes.

“Hey. Yuri, right?” Sister Byleth nudges his arm, and Yuri turns to face her. “What do you think of my brother? I mean, it sounds like you two went through a lot today.”

“O-Oh, uh…” Yuri clear his throat, rubs the back of his neck, and pointedly avoids looking at the knowing smile on sister Byleth’s face. “He’s—nice, yeah. I mean, he helped me out a lot today…” Shit, he said that already, didn’t he? “Uh, he, uh. He paid for me on the train. A-And for our hotel room. And then he…” _Kissed me to hide me from a bunch of people looking to rip me to shreds, and then I sort of made out with him, haha…_

Sister Byleth cocks her head to the side in the exact same manner Byleth does. “And then…?”

“We—Well, there was a lot of—I can’t even pick one event, haha…” Yuri averts his gaze from her eyes and fiddles with his phone instead. “Just, nice. He’s—I like him.” And, when sister Byleth doesn’t say anything, Yuri sighs and adds, “Kind of a shame we had to meet like this.”

“Hmm? How come?” Sister Byleth leans forward, smiling when she looks over at her brother bending down to pat the head of one of the children. “You probably wouldn’t have gotten as close if you had met under different circumstances, don’t you think?”

“Ah, well, that’s…”

She taps out something on her phone, and Yuri looks down at his own in response—there’s a new friend request from xX_AshenDemon_Xx on Heroes, with the promised +10 Altina floating menacingly beside the username. “Anyway, don’t worry about never meeting him again or something like that,” sister Byleth chirps. “I’m sure he doesn’t want to be apart from you, either.”

Yuri wills his cheeks not to heat up—it would’ve been easier when all the lights were dimmed earlier, damn it! “It’s—It’s not like that! Probably. But, uh, I do still need to pay him back.” He coughs. “I got him free pancakes earlier, but I haven’t done anything for the train ride…”

Sister Byleth giggles. “Pancakes? You sure know your way around. Our family loves free food more than anything.”

 _Free food…_ well, who doesn’t? Then again, if getting Byleth free food is the easiest way to win him over, then Yuri can probably do something about that if given a kitchen. Hell, even his own kitchen would be fine, although Yuri would need to get Byleth there in the first place to—

Oh. Holy shit. Hold that fucking thought.

It’s raining again when they leave the school—just a light drizzle this time, though, to Yuri’s relief.

Byleth, of course, has to hold up an umbrella he stole from the lost-and-found to cover all the sleepy children being picked up by their parents, and it takes ages before every student has finally gone. Even Byleth’s sister heads on home by herself, telling Byleth to pick something up for her in a convenience store down the street.

“How was it?” Byleth asks, trotting along beside Yuri like an excited puppy. “Don’t you think Dimitri did well? I think Dimitri did well.”

“Was that the kid who started crying in the middle of his monologue because he forgot the rest of his lines?”

Byleth frowns. “He—He did well during the rehearsals. So it’s the same thing, really.”

Yuri shakes his head. “Okay, whatever you say. Yeah, he did fine. I like the other girl, what’s her na—”

“Dorothea!” Byleth beams. “Yeah, she loves theatre! She told me she wants to be an actress when she grows up. And she helped Bernadetta write the play script, too. Well, mostly her own parts. But they were great, weren’t they?”

Yuri just nods, barely comprehending half the stuff Byleth’s saying. With how slow and quiet he usually talks, Yuri can’t get used to how fast he’s speaking now. It’s kind of cute, though, he won’t lie. “You know who was the best?”

“Who?”

“Your sister.” Yuri holds up his phone, at 100 percent battery for the first time the whole day. “She is _so_ cool. I can’t believe her! I mean, fully-merged Altina? I’m never losing in rival domains again.”

Byleth stares at him blankly, then turns away and crosses his arms over his chest. “I could do that,” he mutters.

“Uh, do what? Get a +10 limited 5-star? Sure, I’d like to see you try. You don’t even have an account.”

Byleth pulls out his phone. “Then I’ll make one.” He presses the home button on his phone once, twice, and several more times before he seems to remember that his phone is dead and his sister had given a complete stranger her powerbank rather than to him. “Later,” Byleth amends with a sigh. “But I can do it. Get a… a 5-star… whatever. She’s not better than me.”

“Aw, Byleth,” Yuri coos, deliberately brushing his hand against Byleth’s and practically reveling in Byleth’s little jolt of surprise, “are you _jealous?_ ”

“What? No,” Byleth huffs, pulling away from Yuri like a spiteful child. “And, and—why are you following me anyway? Hmph.”

 _Did he just ‘hmph’ me? What is he doing? Is he acting cute or is he just somehow always like this!? Damn it! I hate men!_ “Me? Following _you?_ ” They turn a corner, and Yuri mentally thanks the gods for perfect timing as he gestures grandly to the apartment building at the far end of the street. “I _live_ here. If anything, _you’re_ following _me._ ”

Byleth blinks. “Oh. Uh—” Then he blushes, cheeks going that pretty pink shade Yuri is slowly but surely growing more and more obsessed with. “I-I was heading to the. Convenience store. Because… Because Byleth asked me to pick something up, right.”

Yuri points at the plastic bag in his hand. “Didn’t you already? We stopped by there five minutes after leaving the school.”

“Oh,” Byleth says again, pointedly not looking at the plastic bag. “D… Did I.”

“If you want to stay the night with me again, all you have to do is ask, friend.” Yuri waves a hello at the security guard by the entrance. He doesn’t say anything to him aside from his typical gruff good-evening, so perhaps Balthus, Constance, and Hapi haven’t arrived yet. When he looks over his shoulder and sees Byleth standing there awkwardly, looking at Yuri with those endearing blue eyes, Yuri prompts, “Well? Won’t you come in?”

Byleth frowns, looking more confused than bothered now. “Isn’t it your mother’s birthday? You should, um… celebrate by yourselves. I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“Yeah, it is her birthday.” Yuri does his best to maintain eye contact, but embarrassment pushes him to look away at the last second. “And, uh. I figured—I didn’t pay you back for the train, did I?”

“You don’t—”

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t have to, heard that one right before you stuffed yourself full with the sweetest pancakes I’ve ever tasted. Anyway—” Yuri looks back at Byleth, only to see him blushing even harder. “What? Shy because I got to taste them through you?”

“ _Yuri,_ ” Byleth whines, outright _whines,_ and God damn it, Yuri knows he isn’t going to be able to get that voice out of his head. Did he make Byleth whine like that last night? Fucking hell!

“ _Anyway,_ ” Yuri presses, “quit interrupting, I’d like to actually finish my sentences before the day ends—I didn’t get a gift for my mom. But… I’m really good at cooking.” He shrugs, though he catches the way Byleth’s eyes light up in interest. “We don’t have a lot of food or money. But as long as I’ve got a kitchen and some ingredients, I can make just about anything. So… if you wanna stay for the birthday dinner, as thanks for—not just the train, but for everything today…”

It takes a moment, but Byleth finally steps forward, a smile lighting his face up—like this, Yuri thinks he really does resemble a lamp post now. “Okay,” he says, so soft and happy that it makes Yuri’s heart tremble in his chest. “I’d love to meet your mother, Yuri—”

“This isn’t like that!” Yuri nearly shrieks.

A confused pause. Byleth tilts his head. “Isn’t… like what?”

“N—Never mind,” Yuri stammers, turning away but grabbing Byleth’s wrist to pull him along into the apartment. “Uh, my friends are coming over too. My mom likes it when she celebrates with lots of people, and she thinks Balthus is funny—look, just don’t finish all the food, okay? I don’t think we even have enough ingredients to bake a cake, fuck—”

“I’ll help,” Byleth offers. He holds the shaky elevator doors open for Yuri inside the building. “I like cake.”

“You’re going to end up making it salty. Just sit down and eat.”

Yuri pulls his coat tighter around himself as the elevator rises—and realizes, once again, that this isn’t his coat. It’s been through a lot today, hasn’t it—switched owners, got rained on twice, was pressed up against the wall and kissed so thoroughly that Yuri terribly wishes it can happen again… oh, wait. This isn’t about the coat anymore, is it.

 _Hmm._ He glances up at Byleth, who idly watches the floor number on the display change. Yuri smiles a little to himself—maybe if Byleth forgets about his coat, Yuri can use it as an excuse to seek him out and return it…

Or Yuri can just make Byleth stay the night with him again. Maybe then they could make some new memories to replace the ones they’d forgotten.

**Author's Note:**

> \- the choker byleth's wearing can either be a.) from his dancer outfit or b.) literally whatever you want, i did not envision it very well  
> \- as you can tell, the GBF and FEH references absolutely would not work if you did not read this during early march 2020 lol (also sorry if you don't play or know about either 😭 just put urself in mbyleth's shoes because he doesn't understand a thing both his bf and sister are saying!!!)  
> \- expect another fic with twin byleths again... i love them so much. also because of this i can no longer see mbyleth and fbyleth as the same person ever again
> 
> thanks for reading!! u can always find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/featherxs) for more yurileth trash


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